Remembering – forgetting – Learning

Every year on 11th of the 11th in UK we ‘Remember’. ‘Remembrance Day’ honours those who died in two wars that engulfed the world. We claim “we will remember” but what is the value of remembering if we forget what we should have learned?

War Does Not Work! Killing people is a solution that has been used for thousands of years; and it doesn’t work because we keep on ‘having to do it’. In counselling we’d say “try something else!”

Today, we are investing in new and better ways of killing people, and trying to sell the technology to countries with records on human rights that should disturb us. The only ethic in our foreign policy is self-interest, will it make us wealthy, keep us in employment? And this is true for UK, France, Russia, USA, Israel etc.

Were we to spend on international development and cooperation what we spend on ‘defence’ would the world be a better or worse place.